WATER OVER THE DAM

Industrial level irrigation is crucial to the vast grain supply of the West. People know little about the history and implications. To keep the subject manageable, I'm focusing on Valier, MT, headquarters of the Pondera Canal Company and its history.
THIS BLOG IS NOT AN ORGANIZED NARRATIVE BUT A STORAGE SPACE FOR RESEARCH AND THOUGHT. NOT MANY IMAGES. COMMENTS WELCOME.

Swift, Two Medicine dams quickly replaced

The half-century-old, earthen Swift Dam probably collapsed in a matter of minutes June 8, 1964, following a perfect storm of accelerated snowmelt and heavy rains that swelled Birch Creek to unbearable proportions. Coupled with the collapse of Lower Two Medicine Dam on Two Medicine Creek soon after on the same day, the deluge claimed 30 lives and caused an estimated half-billion-dollars of damage in today's dollars.

Both dams are rebuilt. And they're much more sturdy.

"The dam that's there now is a completely different structure," said Vernon Stokes, manager of Pondera County Canal and Reservoir Co. "The spillway is enlarged and is all concrete now. It also has an emergency spillway on top of the dam."

He said the Bureau of Reclamation designed and supervised the construction of Swift Dam and turned it over to the PCCR at completion in 1967. PCCR owns and operates the dam.

The current concrete-arch structure is 205 feet high with a length at its crest of 573 feet.

The old Swift Dam had only a little concrete in it. The rebuilt structure "is nothing like it." The all-concrete spillway now "doesn't erode away," and the capacity of the spillway was increased on the new dam, Stokes said.

Swift Reservoir has a storage capacity of 30,000 acre feet, which is the same as the original dam. An acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet or about 325,853 gallons.

"We've got a lot better gates than what was on the old original Swift Dam," Stokes said.

PCCR workers constantly monitor both dam and water conditions to avert disaster.

The Swift Dam tender visually inspects the structure every day, also checking elevations and inflows. The structure gets yearly maintenance and is inspected every five years by a licensed engineer, he said.

This spring, "we have tremendous snowpack up there," on the nearby Rocky Mountain Front, Stokes said, so "inflows are checked about every two hours.

"We open the dam and release water according to what's coming in," he said. While Swift Reservoir has a maximum capacity of about 35,000 acre-feet, "once it gets up to 30,000 and we've had a rain event, we increase flow," through the dam. He said if the primary spillway fills up, there's an emergency spillway on top of the dam for excess flow, plus two operating gates. "We can open those up as needed."

Swift Dam was built to supply irrigation, not for flood control. He said with its small capacity, the reservoir "can fill up in five or six days if the flow is high enough."

The new structure is "a good strong dam with proven design," Stokes said. "It could withstand just about anything other than a pretty good-sized earthquake."

For any level of possible problem, the canal company has an emergency action plan. "If anything happens to go wrong or there's a big increase in flow, we have a call list," to warn residents to expect high water on Birch Creek, Stokes said. "I don't believe that was in place" in 1964.

There are also a lot more tools now, with stream-flow forecasts put out by USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, which includes snowpack and snowmelt. He said the Bureau of Reclamation has put Swift Dam on its Hydromet data-collection system, which provides "readings on inflow every two hours and a lot more tools to work with."

Lower Two Medicine Dam was 50 years old when it collapsed in the 1964 flood. The dam was rebuilt in 1967 and is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs today. The safety of dams officer/environmental engineer for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Rocky Mountain Regional Office in Billings was unable to respond to the Tribune's questions about new dam and today's safety procedures for this story because he was unable to obtain permission from the BIA's public affairs officer in Washington D.C. in time to meet the publication deadline.

How about Great Falls' 5 dams?

Carrie Harris, manager of engineering and projects for PPL Montana, noted the hydropower producer's five Great Falls-area dams were all in place before 1964 and "withstood the flood without problems. They are designed to withstand a flood exceeding, by quite a bit, the volumes that were produce in the 1964 flood."

She said the PPL dams, although built long-before the Allenton, Pa.-based company acquired them in 1999, "were designed so they can 'overtop' and the dam still stands."

After a big nationwide campaign in the 1970s and 1980s, operators of some older dams installed post-tension anchors, which use thick, stranded wire cables tied into an anchor that is drilled and grouted into bedrock, she said. The anchors are tensioned and act to tie the dam to the riverbed.

"Black Eagle's spillway has rock anchors to bedrock," Harris said, and "portions of Rainbow and Ryan have post-tensioned anchors."

In addition to design and construction changes, she said PPL has a rigorous routine of workers looking for any changes in the dam structure.

This includes:

• Daily observances by workers, with more thorough monthly examinations.

• Every five years an independent consultant is hired to inspect the dam to ensure the structures are meeting current dam stability criteria.

This is coupled with ongoing maintenance, she said.

Oldest dams rehabilitated

Black Eagle and Rainbow dams, the oldest in the Great Falls area, have been rehabilitated. Originally constructed as timber-crib dams, they had a timber framework filled with rocks and concrete to create a dam.

Black Eagle began in operation 1891. During a 1908 flood, workers had to blow a hole in the dam to ease the water flow. It generated no power for almost 20 years, until it was completely rebuilt as a concrete dam and went back online in 1927.

Rainbow first went online in in 1910. Harris said "a major rehabilitation of the spillway portion of the dam was completed in the early 1990s. The rehabilitation consisted of full and partial mass concrete replacement of the original rock-fill timber crib."

When water rises to a level of concern, "we have standard operating procedures for the spillway," and rules for opening "this gate, and then this gate," to let more water flow downstream.

She notes that the Great Falls dams — Black Eagle, Rainbow, Cochrane, Ryan and Morony — are hydroelectric dams, so their main function is power generation, not flood control. They operate on a run-of-river basis, meaning their normal status is to let through the natural river flow. "But Canyon Ferry is our friend upstream. If things get crazy on the Sun River (Canyon Ferry operators) can help us out by holding back water," in the Missouri to mitigate an abnormal influx of the Sun where it meets the Missouri in Great Falls.

The Bureau of Reclamation, owner of Canyon Ferry Dam, "is a big part of our emergency planning."

She said "for the Missouri River at Great Falls, downstream of the confluence with the Sun River, the largest estimated historic peak flood was pre-Canyon Ferry construction and occurred in 1908 with a flow of approximately 140,000 cubic feet per second. All the Great Falls dams are designed to withstand a probably maximum flood of 298,000 cfs."

Editor's note: Lower Two Medicine Dam is under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

PPL Action Plan

PPL Montana has emergency action plans in place for all its facilities, said Carrie Harris, manager of engineering and projects. The dam operator provides safety training and conducts drills annually.

When a situation arises where flooding could become a problem, PPL has three different warning levels for the public.

• Non-failure flood warning.

A situation where waterways are at or near flood stage and PPL Montana operationally does something that may aggravate downstream flooding. This would be "actions that we might have to take to deal with the situation that would additionally increase outflows thus add flows to already flooding rivers," she said.

• Potentially hazardous situation is developing.

A failure may develop, but preplanned actions taken during certain events (major flood, earthquake, evidence of piping, etc.) may prevent or mitigate failure. Time permits a qualified engineer to inspect the dam and assess the potentially hazardous situation.

• Failure is imminent or has occurred.

Failure (uncontrolled release of the reservoir) caused by terrorism, sabotage, major earthquake, etc.

Harris said "all three levels have some contact with outside agencies who then may make additional notifications. The flood-flow warnings have the least number of external/agency notifications, while the dam failure has the most external/agency notifications.

"We also have functional exercises every five years for all people affected by a dam break," including emergency services personnel in the community where the exercise is being staged. An exercise was held in Great Falls last year, she said.

The series

» May 25: 30 of the 31 people who died in the floods perished on the Blackfeet Reservation

» Monday: Most of west Great Falls, Sun River valley under water, plus military response

» Tuesday: Those on the scene will never forget the drama at the head gates

» Wednesday: Choteau evacuated

» Thursday: The flood had long-lasting effects on area streams, rivers and landscape

Sell said the PSC met with attorneys Monday. The announcement prompted them to file court papers Monday afternoon to try to lift a court-ordered stay.

Commissioners want to talk to officials from the city, Liberty and Mountain Water. The motion says the only purpose is to hear what all sides have to say about the sale.

Missoula Mayor John Engen released a statement that said, in part, "The reality is that the City of Missoula won the condemnation case and has the court order to prove it. The City has the right to take possession of the water system at a price that has been determined in court."

The City of Missoula went to court to sue for ownership of Mountain Water under state eminent domain laws. A judge approved the purchase and the city was set to go to court Monday over the value of the water company, but instead the city dropped its appeal Friday.

Some residents we talked with say they want Missoula to own its water.

"We have a stake in how it's run and the upkeep of it and how much is charged for the utility," said Missoula resident David Tyson.

A commenter on KECI’s Facebook page said, "I think it's awesome. Engen wants to play ball with the big boys but he is way out of his league. This sale was being negotiated before the city even started."

Last week Engen said the city's next step would be to wait on an appeal currently in Montana Supreme Court filed by the Carlyle Group challenging the initial condemnation suit.---

The following is a news release from Liberty Utilities:

Liberty Utilities announced the completion of its acquisition of Mountain Water Company as part of a larger purchase of Park Water Company. Based in Downey, California, Park Water owns and operates three regulated utilities engaged in the production, treatment, storage, distribution and sale of water including Mountain Water in Missoula and two other utilities in Southern California. The three utilities collectively serve approximately 74,000 customer connections and have more than 1,000 miles of distribution mains.

"We have been working together with Park Water Company over the last several months to ensure a smooth transition and we're looking forward to delivering high-quality service to all of our new water customers for decades to come," said Greg Sorensen, President of Liberty Utilities Co.

Missoula customers can be assured that the local people who serve them today will continue to serve them in the future. Operational decisions about resource conservation, infrastructure improvement, customer care and more will be local decisions, made by the same managers and employees who have served Missoula well for so many years. Liberty Utilities is committed to providing best-in-class customer care delivered at the local level and we will continue to be an active participant in this community. We look forward to being a good neighbor that remains focused on corporate responsibility, environmental protection and conservation, and preserving local jobs.

"Mountain Water has been honored to serve our customers in Missoula for many years," said John Kappes, General Manager of Mountain Water. "We have no doubt that Libe1iy Utilities, as an experienced utility that prides itself on community-oriented values, local management and custorner service, commitment to safety, and focus on corporate responsibility, will head a water utility system that continues to make decisions in the best interest of Montana's water resources and customers," said Mr. Kappes.

The sale to Liberty Utilities was originally announced in September, 2014.

Liberty Utilities is a regulated water, natural gas and electric transmission and distribution utility, delivering responsive and reliable essential services to over 560,000 customers across the United States. With a local approach to management, service and suppo1i, we deliver efficient, dependable services to meet the needs of our customers. Liberty Utilities provides a superior customer experience through walk-in customer centers, locally focused conservation and energy efficiency initiatives, and programs for businesses and residential customers. We measure our performance in terrns of service reliability, an enjoyable customer experience, and an unwavering dedication to public and workplace safety.

---

The following is Missoula Mayor John Engen's full statement:

The company that lost Mountain Water Company (Carlyle) just purported to sell the company to Canada (Algonquin/Liberty). Carlyle’s and Algonquin’s announcement and supposed sale have no legal effect. The reality is that the City of Missoula won the condemnation case and has the court order to prove it. The City has the right to take possession of the water system at a price that has been determined in court.

The Carlyle Group, Algonquin and Liberty are taking inconsistent legal positions. In the process, they have thumbed their noses at two Montana State District Courts (Judge Townsend and Judge Halligan) and the Montana Public Service Commission. Only after Carlyle and Mountain Water lost the water system in court did they pursue this desperate course of action.

Carlyle and Mountain Water have shown a complete disregard for Montana Courts and Montana law, and Algonquin/Liberty appear not to be paying attention. While Carlyle and Mountain Water still think they are above the law, the City expects they and their Canadian friends will continue to lose in Court, and the water system will be in Missoula’s control soon.

Copyright 2016 by KECI, KCFW, KTVM. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Supreme Court wades through water dispute between Curry Cattle Co. and PCC&RC

Posted: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 6:00 am

By PHIL DRAKE Great Falls Tribune

The Montana Supreme Court waded through five points of contention in a water rights issue and then sent it back to a water court for further adjudication.

The court voted 6-1 in a decision released Tuesday in the case Gene and Cheryl Curry and the Curry Cattle Co. v. the Pondera County Canal and Reservoir Co. (PCC&RC). The Currys had filed an appeal of an order made by the Montana Water Court and PCC&RC cross-appealed portions of the order.

The court addressed five decisions the Montana Water Court made, including if water rights developed under the Carey Land Act are limited by historical use, was it wrong for the Water Court to grant Pondera “a service area” rather than base it on historically irrigated land? And did the Water Court err by ruling PCC&RC storage rights were used beneficially on Birch Creek Flats prior to 1973?

“We affirm the Water Court’s conclusion that Pondera’s rights are not limited by the shareholders’ actual historical acreage irrigated,” Justice Michael Wheat wrote. “We further affirm the Water Court’s conclusion that Pondera is entitled to a service area.

“However, we hold the Water Court erred when it determined the acreage included in the service area and we remand this issue to the court for further proceedings …”

Justice Laurie McKinnon dissented, saying she would reverse the Water Court’s opinion and affirm the Water Master’s opinion limiting PCC&RC’s annual irrigation to 56,556 acres.

She said the court was reinforcing the adage of “hard cases make bad law.”

“I believe that the principles the Court announces today will ultimately prove unsound,” she wrote. “There is no doubt in my mind that the rampant speculation that will ensue from this decision will force this Court’s hand to either expressly overrule the decision or distinguish it from future cases based on inconsequential facts.”

John Bloomquist, a Helena-based attorney who represents PCC&RC was happy with the judges’ action.

“I think it is a good decision for Pondera and its water users,” he said, adding the high court addressed a couple of fundamental water law issues regarding water projects in terms of how water rights are historically recognized. Gene Curry also said the court ruled in his favor by excluding the Birch Creek Flats from the service area.

“It’s nice to have a decision, but I thought it would come a little sooner,” he said, noting the decision was not unanimous and the issue now goes back to the Montana Water Court.

The case originates from a water distribution controversy on Birch Creek, which is a tributary of the Marias River.

The Currys and Pondera own rights to divert waters from Birch Creek. The 9th Judicial District Court referred the case to the Water Court to determine the water rights. It has yet to receive final adjudication, according to the lawsuit.

PCC&RC supplies water to county residents, primarily for irrigation. It owns rights to divert water from Birch Creek and a distribution system that includes canals, ditches, siphons and headgates, the lawsuit states.

PCC&RC’s predecessors got some its water rights through use of the Carey Land Act, a federal act that encouraged settlement of the arid West. Once an irrigation was built under the direction of the state, an operating company was set up and it could sell patented land to stockholder-settlers.

PCC&RC is owned by its membership and water is distributed to shareholders on a per share basis. However, they did not receive individual water rights to irrigate their land, but had the right to the water in common with other settler-shareholders, court documents state.

Curry is a private landowner with irrigation water rights in the Birch Creek Flats and came into possession of his property and water rights in 1988.

In 2004, PCC&RC told Curry his water rights were less than had been earlier indicated by a former Pondera employee. Pondera then locked his headgate in 2005, the lawsuit states.

In her dissent, McKinnon stated this action and growing need threatened Curry’s way of life.

Curry filed a complaint with the 9th Judicial District Court in 2005, which sent the case to the Water Court. In 2006, the District Court issued a preliminary injunction preventing Pondera from interfering with Curry’s water diversion from Birch Creek, the lawsuit states.

In 2013, the water master found that PCC&RC was allowed to irrigate a maximum of 57,073 acres and not 72,000 acres, which at one time was believed to be the maximum.

Although PCC&RC claimed a service area of more than 377,000 acres, it was never historically serviced, court documents state.

The master also excluded the Flats from the service area, saying that water used on the Flats prior to 1973 was non-PCC&RC water.

The Water Court disagreed with the master’s conclusion regarding the maximum number of shares and found that the 377,000 acre figure was appropriate and the Flats should be included.

The Supreme Court found the PCC&RC shareholders had a right to 377,255 acres.

“Merely, we agree with the Water Court that the 377,255.5 acres described as the service area will be sufficient for the purposes of its certification order …” it wrote.

The Supreme Court justices also found the Water Court did not err in respect to Curry’s appeal and PCC&RC ’s cross-appeal regarding specific water rights.

That also was sent back to the Water Court.

_______________

n.b. The Curry extended families own the majority of the businesses in Valier, as well as ranches nearby.

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Later in the day, the problem ended. This is our first week without one of our city workers, the one who was in charge of “dirty” water. Could that be the problem or is my house trying to do me in -- again? The two aspects of the town’s piping is one that brings the potable (clean enough to drink) water into the house and one that carries the used water out to the sewage lagoon. In the past the two men had divided the work between them with the dirty water being managed by Roger, who was wooed away by a different town. I don’t know whether this backflow problem was about “dirty” or “clean” water but it hardly matters since now one guy must do both. His health is not good. Water masters are in short supply. City employees here take so much criticism and second-guessing that it won’t be easy to hire.

Clearly, we citizens need to get informed about managing small town water systems very quickly. Luckily the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services has posted on YouTube a whole series about this, called “Managing a Small Town Public Water System”. The link above is to the fifth vid in the series. It’s not the only YouTube series about such practical matters. Other towns also register advice, and I’ve begun watching them all. I realized what a great household resource YouTube is when my toilet shut-off valve wore out months ago and the replacement wasn’t the familiar bulb-on-an-arm I’d dealt with before, but rather some puzzling tube thing.

Maybe no one realizes how much maintenance and management a water system needs. We have two water-towers now, four wells, different kinds of pumps, and several miles of “tubing” through the town and out to the sewage lagoon. All this stuff is vulnerable to weather, usage, and small disasters like pipe collapse. There’s a lot of checking, adjusting, and just monitoring.

This lady speaks about the planetary version of water distribution and says there is always the same amount of water on Earth. I had no idea. It changes states (vapor, liquid, fluid) but not amount. I keep having realizations: like water towers are only needed if there’s no hill to get the water tank up high for gravity flow. This is an excellent thing to remember if you’re siting a new town. Heart Butte, Cut Bank, Shelby and Conrad all have that advantage.

When I first came to Browning in 1961, the water system was poorly understood. One tank was up by Parsons -- you could see it along highway 89 -- and a water tower was a few blocks from me. The line between the two had just been reinstalled without an engineer, so the trench had been dug a certain depth, the pipe was put in and connected, but because it followed the contours of the land, it airlocked all the time. Most of it had been dug up and realigned. The water tower itself was sometimes filled with a pump turned on by hand and sometimes the operator forgot to come back and turn off the pump on time, so that it overflowed. The sound always made met think it had begun to rain, usually at night when no one was drawing water.

All water distribution systems vary in pressure, which is much of what has to be watched and adjusted. A water master must be in town 24/7 to deal with emergencies from broken pipes or failed pumps. That’s why there are two.

One takes classes to learn about how to become a “water master” who is certified to manage a town water system. This website provides news about the tests and YouTube practice questions. http://mostwatertraining.com “MOST” stands for McLean's Operational Services Training. There are specific variations in various locations.

One that struck me right off was the one about “blue baby syndrome” which is about nitrates that get into the water systems, particularly when there is a lot of nitrate use for fertilizer in conjunction with irrigation. Once I helped deliver a calf with nitrate in it’s system: it lived only as long as the mother’s oxygen was in its blood. Nitrates replace hemoglobin, producing chemical suffocation. The calf seemed fine but with a minute was inert -- no convulsions, no bleeding, no wound. Just dead. I hope local obstetricians check for nitrates in the mother’s blood as a standard part of prenatal care. I know of one ranch well that was contaminated. There was a pregnant female in the family.

By now I’ve subscribed to three separate u-tube “flows” of information about town water systems. No one is going to hire a tubby old lady to be a water master, but maybe I’ll take the exam just to see whether I could pass it. The fees cost a few hundreds of dollars. The problem we’ve got here is that $15 an hour is not enough to attract a prepared water master, so we would have to take a chance on fronting the money for the tests -- the state allows six months to a year to pass -- for someone who might not pass or might get discouraged and quit.

These YouTubes are called “virtual training” rather than “online education.” They tend to be practical demonstrations, video courses that ought to prepare one for the state exam. Each of the following (which is the list of lessons offered by MOST) costs $10, which should be added to the cost of the test. As you can see, this is not the same as turning a garden hose on and off. Skills needed are chemistry, geology, hydrology, but -- most of all -- math. Roger has needed marksmanship in order to remove muskrats who burrow through the outer earth wall, threatening to drain the lagoon.

The factor that haunts us here is extreme low temps. After we failed our coliform tests repeatedly last winter, we had to add a cover and circulation pumps to keep the “bugs” warm enough to digest waste. It’s just being finished. The state requires engineers because too many amateurs think things are simple when they are not. But engineers slip up, too. I don’t know what their excuse is, but it’s not helpful when they come from some other ecology.

Some of these water master subjects may seem a little exotic. The one about iron and manganese treatment is what made reservation water impossible to use for dialysis -- when chlorine hit, it precipitated into little black dots. It was an expensive struggle to find a local clean water source, but a necessary one to keep people from having to travel a hundred miles to a dialysis center several times a week. We used to joke about the local water guy in 1990 in Heart Butte -- which was either before the state standards were passed or so remote a community that no one checked. If he needed to go to town and wouldn’t be there to dump in the chlorine that day, he just dumped in double, figuring that it would average out. Sometimes the teachers looked a little pale, but we were “pale faces” anyway. (Jokes. I’ve learned to mark my jokes since some people mistake them for insults.) We were constantly afflicted by low-grade GI upsets.

The Hydrologic Cycle

Reservoirs

Pipe Systems

Flow Meters

Chloramines in the Distribution System

Back flow and cross connections

Dimensional Analysis

Area Calculation

Volume Calculation

Flow Rate Calculation

Velocity Calculation, Friction, and Hydraulic Grade Lines

Chemical Feed Calculations: The Pounds Formula

Chemical Feed Calculations: Chlorination (2 parts

Static Hydraulics: Density, Specific Gravity, and Pressure

CT Calculations

Activated Carbon Adsorption

Ion Exchange

Iron and Manganese Treatment

Fluoridation

Lime Softening

Corrosion

The Nature of Water

Secondary Standards

Microbiology for Operators

The Total Coliform Rule and Measuring Coliforms

Disinfectants

Disinfection By-Products

General Source Water Characteristics

The Surface Water Treatment Rule

Coagulation

Filtration (2 parts)

Chlorination

Chloramination

Ozonation

The Valier water system does not only serve the residents. Some ranches have no well, so they must come into town to fill up giant tanks that can be emptied into their underground cisterns. Aside from household use, they mix the water with herbicides and fertilizer as well as watering livestock. A little tricky when it’s thirty below. Of course, anyone who comes to church, school, cafe, service station is using the town water system. We are learning to think of the town as the center of a wider area that is a service area, like the gas, the telephone lines, the electricity. Water is the key to life itself, but distribution and use are what turn the key.

It's not a coincidence that most of the state's first successful businesses were determined by who got the water. Whether it was Nelson Story setting up the Bozeman Waterworks Co. to power his grain mill and eventually selling it to the town (after he became mayor), or Copper King Marcus Daly building a reservoir on Skalkaho Creek to serve budding Hamilton, water has been a key to future fortune.

Missoula is the only major city in Montana that doesn't own its water supply. Although the first waterworks was started by founding fathers C.P. Higgins and Frank Worden, the company was soon bought by Butte copper magnate W.A. Clark and never left private hands.

Now, in the wake of The Carlyle Group's announcement that it will buy Missoula's privately held water company, Mountain Water Co., residents have asked why - and how - the city wound up without public ownership of its drinking water.

Last week, the Missoulian contacted officials in other Montana cities to hear their stories and found a mixed past of private and public ownership.

Consider the following:

Butte

Retired water system manager David Schultz observed: "When most towns and cities are planned and settled, a major consideration is what the source of drinking water will be. Most cities are located near a river or lake or some other water source. However, Butte's location was determined by the presence of mining opportunities."

Putting a city in a basin 5,000 feet above sea level and almost on the Continental Divide guaranteed water troubles. Having mining for a major industry exacerbated the problem. Silver Bow Creek, the basin's only significant water source, was poisoned with mining waste soon after the area was settled.

In 1890, most of Butte's water needs came from the railroads. But in the next few years, increasing mining activity demanded more water. Copper King W.A. Clark built the Butte City Water Co., and soon sold it to Boston-Montana Mining Co. President A.S. Bigelow for $300,000. By 1899, that company was bankrupt and needed a $1 million loan to keep going.

It was also busily developing a pumping system that brought water from the Big Hole River, nearly 1,000 feet lower in elevation. The Anaconda Mining Co. and later Atlantic Richfield Co. owned the system until Missoula industrialist Dennis Washington bought it in 1985. He sold it to the city-county government in 1992.

*****

Great Falls

Private builders started Great Falls' city water supply in the 1850s, according to present-day water plant manager Mike Jacobson. The city bought it in 1895.

But across the Missouri River, the community of Black Eagle had its own water system, built and owned by the Anaconda Mining Co.

"When they shut down, we had to run a water main extension across to Black Eagle, Jacobson said. "Now we're serving the city of Great Falls, Black Eagle and Malmstrom Air Force Base, pulling it all out of the river."

*****

Billings

Local businessmen set up Billings' first water system in 1885. Their original Billings Water Power Co. depended on an 80-horsepower waterwheel to generate electricity, and a pump that sent 150,000 gallons a day of untreated Yellowstone River water to the city. The city government bought it in 1915 for $315,000, according to a history recap on the city's website.

*****

Bozeman

Nelson Story left his family name all over the Bozeman basin. After leading the cattle drive fictionalized in the story "Lonesome Dove," he set up a grain mill in Bozeman and powered it with water from the Lyman Creek spring, according to city water and sewer superintendent John Alston. He expanded the system into a municipal water supply, the Bozeman Waterworks Co. When he became mayor of Bozeman in 1900, he arranged for the city to buy his system.

Alston said the city eventually outgrew the Lyman Creek supply, and now depends on Hyalite Lake and Sourdough Creek to keep the taps flowing.

"Water is going to be a limit to growth here," he said. "We're in the process of obtaining additional water rights."

*****

Helena

The Yaw Yaw ditch delivered Helena's first municipal water supply in 1864. According to the city's history archive, the name was the reply to the question: "Should we build a ditch?"

The Helena Water Works was owned by a New Jersey company until 1910, when the company went bankrupt and the city acquired it for $400,000. Wooden pipes ran the water from Grizzly Gulch and Dry Gulch (now Davis Street). William Chessman built a reservoir on Ten Mile Creek and extended a water line to the city in 1921. The 1935 earthquake dried up the Dry Gulch supply and forced several rearrangements of supply sources. Some of the old wooden pipes remained in action through the 1970s.

*****

Hamilton

"When city started, they had a reservoir off of Skalkaho Creek, and they would gravity-feed off of it," Hamilton Public Works director Keith Smith said. "We're not sure if (Marcus) Daly did it or the other town fathers, but he wanted it. At some point it was probably owned by city, then it was private, and now the city owns it again."

Hamilton bought the water system from Valley Water Co. around 1982 for about $1 million. Smith said the widening of Highway 93 through downtown precipitated the sale. The private company lacked the resources to expand the main lines, so the city had to arrange the financing.

"Now we've got a water facility master plan for 2009 that looks 20 years out to the future," Smith said. "We're in good shape for another 10 years, but if we see the growth like we saw in the '90s, we'll have to expand."